


Strange Changes

by Kirathaune



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, IN SPACE!, M/M, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 02:35:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12223983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirathaune/pseuds/Kirathaune
Summary: It was supposed to be a routine colony transport, and all Captain Genjo Sanzo wanted was to get the settlement built, get all the colonists off his damn ship, and hopefully get laid by his Chief Engineer. The planet had other ideas.





	Strange Changes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sekaiseifuku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sekaiseifuku/gifts).



> Written for Sekaiseifuku for the 2017 7th Night Exchange, for the prompt "Sanzo x Goku/Seiten Taisei - In space!"

Of all the facets of deep-space travel that Genjo Sanzo hated—and there were enough facets to make a fucking 10-carat diamond—waking up from cryosleep took the top spot.  
  
In all the recruitment brochures, colony transport crew members were shown blissfully asleep in their cushioned, misty pods, smiling as they dreamed their dreams of the new, exotic worlds they would visit. Then soft music gently roused them, and they blinked sleepily at the gauzy haze of golden light that surrounded them.  
  
Reality slammed Sanzo awake with ear-splitting sonics, and he shielded his eyes from the harsh fluorescent glare with a frost-covered hand as his pod lid retracted. With shaking hands he removed the medicollar that encircled the based of his throat, and then he carefully swung his legs over the side and eased himself up to a sitting position. Habit made him glance over at the other three pods in the cryo chamber, to make sure their inhabitants were okay, even though he knew the ship’s android helmsman had been watching over all of them for the past eight months.  
  
They slept on, at least for now. Lucky bastards.  
  
Sanzo peeled off the half dozen or so sensors from his body, cursing when a few slipped through his still trembling fingers. He cursed again when the shivering started in earnest as the receptor inhibitors wore off.  
  
“Good morning, Captain Sanzo,” Nataku said as he entered the chamber. “I received the alert that your revival routine had started. I hope it was pleasant.” He handed Sanzo a thermoplas blanket.  
  
“It was not,” Sanzo muttered through chattering teeth, and he wrapped himself in the blanket. Rank had its privileges, but one of the more dubious ones was being brought out of cryosleep first, via an automated program that kicked off when _The Journey_ reached its pre-orbit checkpoint. Programs didn’t give a shit about the after-effects of an accelerated revival from cryosleep, and neither did androids, although Sanzo had managed to make a few adjustments to Nataku’s care subroutines.  
  
Nothing too flashy, just the thermoplas blanket and some hot coffee. The android made surprisingly good coffee.  
  
“Shall I wake the others now, Captain?” Nataku placed a neat stack of clothing next to where Sanzo sat, and then offered him a steaming mug of coffee.  
  
“Yeah,” Sanzo said, taking the mug. He sipped the hot brew as he finished thawing out, and he watched the android adjust various dials and sliders on the other three cryopods, as he brought their occupants gradually out of their torpor. Nataku was an older military-class model, and with his ball-jointed limbs there was no mistaking him for a human, but his slender, flexible build allowed him to get into places the rest of them couldn’t, and his durability was excellent. Sanzo had been offered an upgrade several times, but he was happy to keep Nataku in active service as long as Goku could get replacement parts.  
  
As if summoning him by thinking his name, the lid on the pod next to his rose and moments later Lieutenant Goku Son was on his feet, stretching this way and that, affording Sanzo an excellent view of the curves of a damn fine ass moving beneath a pair of one-size-too-small boxers.  
  
“Heya, Sanzo!” Goku smiled widely at him.  
  
It was disgusting how easily Goku woke from cryosleep, Sanzo thought. Every fucking time, he practically bounced out of his pod, more cheerful than any recently frozen person had a right to be, and ready to dive enthusiastically into whatever awaited them planetside.  
  
It almost made Sanzo want to make Goku captain, so that he could take his time waking up.  
  
Almost. The fact that his chief engineer could sometimes be a moron kept him from doing so. Sanzo watched Goku greet Nataku like an old friend, fascinated by the change in the android’s demeanor. Nataku was actually smiling, looking more like a mischievous young man instead of a decommissioned ‘Killing Doll.’ Maybe it was because Goku treated him like a human, Sanzo thought, realizing that Goku was the only one Nataku called by his given name. Sanzo set the half-finished coffee on the floor next to his pod and reached for his clothing, peripherally aware of Goku’s appraising gaze flicking over him as he shed the blanket and pulled on a pair of pants and a shirt.  
  
One of these days, hopefully soon, he was going to do something about this thing, this attraction between them, Sanzo promised himself. Waiting for Goku to make the first move wasn’t working out so well, though; Goku was a curious stickler for the rules when it came to chain of command, and even though Sanzo’s First Officer and Security Chief had absolutely no problem fraternizing with each other, Goku seemed hesitant to do more than mild flirting with his commanding officer. It was a pain in the ass. If Gojyo didn’t care that Hakkai outranked him, why should Goku?  
  
Once again, it was as if his thoughts summoned the remaining members of his staff. Commander Hakkai Cho was dressed and drinking tea before Sanzo had finished zipping his cargo pants; Hakkai was another bastard who woke from cryosleep with enviable ease. Sanzo wasn’t sure whether he was grateful or embarrassed that Gojyo was still wrapped in his blanket.  
  
“God, I need a cig,” Gojyo said. “I hate waking up from this shit.”  
  
“No smoking on board, Lieutenant Commander Sha,” Nataku said, handing him a cup of coffee.  
  
Gojyo and Sanzo made eye contact of the ‘yeah we’ll wait until he’s somewhere else’ variety. Both men had tobacco stashes.  
  
“Are you ready for me to prepare breakfast, Captain?” Nataku asked.  
  
“I’m ready!” Goku said, waving. “I’m starving!”  
  
“Yeah, we’re ready.” Sanzo replied, and he glanced at Goku, who was still in those skimpy boxers. “Put some damn clothes on,” he said. “Let’s go eat, and then we’ll get the shuttle ready to head down to the surface.”  
  


* * *

  
  
“Wow, this place is cool!” Goku said as the four men stood outside the main cargo hatch of the shuttle. “It looks way better than it did in all those survey-bot vids.” He took a deep breath. “Mmm, smells good too. You forget how stale the ship’s air can be.” He took another deep breath.  
  
“Survey vids are taken in low resolution so that they can stay intact during fold-space transfer,” Hakkai said. “That’s one of the reasons we’re here ahead of the colonists—not everything shows up on those vids, and the bots aren’t necessarily able to test everything.” He walked over to a craggy outcrop of stone that looked out over the valley below, and touched a button on the side of the monoviewer that perched in front of his right eye. Green glowing text streamed over the glass as he took in their immediate surroundings. “Also, who knows what might have changed here since we received those images.”  
  
They had landed at the northernmost lip of the shallow valley that had been chosen for the initial colony settlement. It was protected from harsh weather by the sloping hillsides, and had a sizable river as well as a large lake to provide plenty of water for the colonists’ needs. The settlement was to be a small village, created near the lake’s shore. If the village was thriving after a year, Sanzo and his crew would return with a second batch of colonists, and another village would be created.  
  
There’s definitely more forest growth,” Sanzo said as he walked up next to Hakkai, “but the terraformers will take care of that. I’m more worried about any life forms that might have moved into the neighborhood during the months it took us to get here.”  
  
Hakkai pressed another button, and an oscillating red line flowed over the lens. “More foliage and flora, yes, but I don’t detect any life forms in the site area, other than the same insects, ornithurae, and small mammals that were in the initial survey reports.” Another button, and now a blue grid appeared on the glass. “No recent seismic activity, either.”  
  
“So we’re still good to go for this site?” Gojyo asked.  
  
“Looks like it,” Hakkai said.  
  
Sanzo was relieved at the reply; if any of the higher-class mammals had settled in the area, they would have had to scrap the site and move on to their second choice. The Federated Worlds’ Council had strict rules on colonization, and even stricter rules regarding the use of terraforming. It had taken the Shangri-La Colony Project over fifteen years to get to this point, and the three years leading up to departure had been spent selecting the best spot for their first settlement that didn’t displace or adversely impact existing species.  
  
He really didn’t give a shit where the colonists settled—all Sanzo wanted to do was make the village, thaw out the fifteen hundred people who slept in dreamless torpor aboard _The Journey_ , get their asses planetside and then get his own ass back to Tougenkyou for a nice furlough, where he could maybe, finally, be able to fuck his Chief Engineer.  
  
Regardless of Goku’s position on fraternization, it was hard to get it on with anyone while in cryosleep.  
  
“So what are we doing, Fearless Leader?” Gojyo asked. “We’re not starting this today, are we? Because even though Nataku was all ‘good morning’ to us earlier, it looks like in a few hours it’ll be ‘good evening.’ As your amazing and awesome Chief of Security I’d feel much better if we were all secured inside the shuttle when the suns go down.”  
  
Sanzo glanced skyward and saw that Gojyo was right—they had maybe four or five hours before sunset. Sanzo wouldn’t be caught dead using the words ‘amazing’ or ‘awesome’ with regard to Gojyo, but he had to admit he did a decent job of keeping their asses intact. “Let’s fly down to the settlement site and set up the terraformer units, and get all the plascrete tanks in place. That way we can do the terraforming and materializing in the morning, and hopefully be back on board _The Journey_ by tomorrow night. Shuttling the colonists will take a few days, and then we’ll be done and on our way home.”  
  
“Furlough, baby!” Gojyo threw an arm across Hakkai’s shoulders. “Six whole months, too. We should start thinking where we want to go.”  
  
“I’ve always wanted to vacation on Veryllium,” Hakkai said as he switched off the filters on his monoviewer. “The planet’s ‘singing sands’ are supposed to be amazing.”  
  
The two men continued to discuss possible vacation destinations as they headed up the ramp back into the shuttle, and when they disappeared inside Goku turned to Sanzo.  
  
“I’ve never had six months off,” he said.  
  
“Well, the other trips you’ve done with us were mostly short run gigs,” Sanzo said. “Pay and perks are good for deep space job like this, it makes up for being a sleeping popsicle for most of the trip.”  
  
Goku scuffed his boot in the rock-strewn soil. “So… where we you thinking of going when we’re done?”  
  
“Someplace warm, where I can get a decent night’s sleep.” Sanzo’s needs were simple.  
  
More scuffing. “Maybe we could go someplace together sometime.”  
  
As moves went, it was clumsy and awkward, and Sanzo almost felt like they were back on Old Terra and he had been asked out to a school dance. Goku would never be considered a smooth operator, but then again, Sanzo wouldn’t have been interested in him if he had.  
  
It was definitely a step in the right direction, though, however obliquely done, and Sanzo would take what he could get.  
  
“Yeah, maybe,” Sanzo said, keeping his response carefully casual, and he was rewarded with a bright smile.  
  
“Cool!” Goku bounded up the ramp, and Sanzo followed closely behind.  
  
He wondered if Goku felt as relieved as he did.  
  


* * *

  
  
The next morning, Sanzo felt… off.  
  
It wasn’t like they had done a lot the day before; after moving the shuttle to the primary settlement area, the four of them had made relatively quick work of off-loading the terraforming units and plascrete tanks. Sanzo had then activated the placement holo-grid, and the next few hours were spent setting the gear on grav-lifts, hooking them up to the skimmers, and guiding them to their spots on the flickering, neon-green grid that covered the handful of hectares that would become the first colony village on Shangri-la.  
  
They’d finished with an hour or so to spare, and everyone chose to bathe in the yet-unnamed lake instead of showering with reclaimed graywater. Even Sanzo had floated peacefully in the water, enjoying the way the approaching sunset colored the sky. Dinner in the shuttle’s tiny common room had been followed by several rowdy rounds of cards and several pints of beer, and then everyone had turned in for a normal, unfrozen, night’s sleep.  
  
If you counted lying awake listening to Goku snoring away in the next bunk as normal.  
  
Sanzo had woken late with a vague aching in his joints, which he had initially dismissed as the aftereffects of moving all the terraformers into place, especially since the others had made similar comments about feeling sore. But the aches persisted, joined by a dull throb at his temples that took away much of his appetite for breakfast.  
  
It was almost like he’d caught a cold, but that wasn’t possible. His symbiont was a possessive bitch and didn’t really let him get sick.  
  
He told himself to get over it. They needed to get the basic housing done, so that Nataku could revive the first batch of colonists. Then they could spend the next week or so shuttling everyone to their new homes. Lather, rise, repeat until he and his crew could head back home.  
  
Sanzo gazed at the lush expanse of green beneath them as Hakkai expertly piloted the skimmer to the main terraformer control unit. One of the nice things about symbiont-run terraform programs was that they allowed for a large portion of trees to remain, as well as other land features that might be considered useful or exceptionally beautiful. Terraforming had improved in recent years, and the units no longer destroyed everything in a site. Of course, that depended on the machinery—and the technician—but resident sites like this colony village were using cutting-edge hardware and software. The software was Sanzo himself, and the Maten symbiont that was merged with his brain and nervous system, which allowed him to control the terraformers and run the routines that created the living spaces the colonists would call home. There were any number of transport ships available for hire, as well as building contractors, but there were only a handful of ships like _The Journey_ that were commanded by a technician enhanced with one of the Tenchi Kaigen symbionts.  
  
He glanced at the scroll in his hand, which held schematics and diagrams for the village they were about to build. He had downloaded the routines the previous night, slipping the nanochip into the access port on his left wrist, which was conveniently disguised with a metal band that also housed a chronopiece. Even though every detail was etched into his brain, he still liked to have a hard copy to focus on; it helped him when the other three were squawking in his earpiece, while the Maten hummed inside his brain, in his bones, pushing data through him so fast that he could barely keep up.  
  
It wasn’t a coincidence that most of the other symbiont-enhanced technicians drank like fishes and had serious smoking habits.  
  
Not that there were many of them. Surviving the symbiosis itself was a challenge; most candidates had partial transitions that left them with some augmentation, but not enough to qualify as a terraform technician. Some didn’t survive. Full transitions were rare, with a not insignificant risk of insanity.  
  
As someone who accidentally experienced a full symbiosis, Sanzo was glad to be able to consider himself mostly sane.  
  
Hakkai landed the skimmer near the control unit, and Sanzo climbed out and took his pack out of the back of the skimmer. “Check in when you’re in position,” he said, slipping on his earpiece. When the others didn’t respond right away he glared at them. “Hello? Am I talking to myself?”  
  
Hakkai started, and then he looked over at Sanzo. “Sorry,” he said, “my arms have been itching a bit.” He examined his arm. “I don’t see a rash, though.”  
  
“Me, too!” Goku said. “But not my arms—it’s my stomach that itches.” He pointed at Gojyo. “He’s been scratching at the back of his neck. Are you itchy too, Gojyo?”  
  
“Yeah,” Gojyo said, frowning, “although I didn’t think I got bitten by anything. I guess we did, if we’re all itching.”  
  
“I’m not,” Sanzo said.  
  
“Yeah, well, we all know you’re special,” Gojyo retorted.  
  
Hakkai kept Sanzo from climbing back into the skimmer. “Gojyo, please. It’s quite possible that there were some biting insects by the lake.” He switched on his monoviewer and activated the lens. “I don’t see any evidence of bites,” he said, as he scanned his arm and Gojyo’s neck, “or the presence of any kind of venom.” He turned to Sanzo. “There’s always some minor physical adjustments to be expected when in a new ecosystem for the first time. I’m sure it will pass.”  
  
“Let’s get moving,” Sanzo said, and then he repeated, “and check in when you’re in position.”  
  
This time he got three affirmatives, and he watched as the skimmer moved off to the next terraform unit.  
  
Sanzo sat down cross-legged in front of the control unit, unfurled the scroll, and laid it across his lap while he waited for the others to reach their units. He didn’t have to wait too long before he heard three ‘ready’ replies. “Stand by for initialization,” he said, and then he reached for the unit’s interface cable and plugged it into a small jack on the side of band on his wrist.  
  
“Initializing.” Sanzo flipped the power switch on the control unit, and then he murmured the words that woke the Maten from its slumber in the corner of his consciousness.  
  
The Maten had been a part of Sanzo for almost half his life, ever since the symbiont had ‘jumped’ from his father’s dying body into his own over twelve years before. But no matter how many times he accessed the sentient force that shared his body, he still reeled from the rush of power and energy that roiled inside him, and he still fought to keep a shred of control as the contents of the nanochip flooded his mind. So much—too much—and Sanzo grabbed the handles on the sides of the unit and hung on as the Maten transcribed the plans and diagrams into the code language used by the terraformers and pushed the command lines through the interface cable.  
  
A panel opened at the top of the control unit, and a blue gridwork cube rose from inside, expanding until it towered a good ten meters above where Sanzo sat. Similar gridwork towers rose from where Gojyo, Hakkai, and Goku were positioned, and when Sanzo heard them confirm that the frame was ready he flicked on another set of switched and pushed the next section of code through.  
  
Glowing blue lines shot out from each of the towers, connecting them along the edges as well as the diagonals. When Sanzo issued a command, nodes appeared at the center of each line, and new lines formed to create a shimmering web that suspended above them.  
  
Sanzo focused on the sections of housing that would be built while the others readied the plascrete tanks, and then he started the next sequence and let the Maten take over controlling the terraform laser that rose from his unit, while he oversaw the plascrete materializer subroutine. It was always a strange experience, no matter how many times he’d done it, the sensation of being in the ‘back seat’ of his body, looking on while the symbiont did the work. The laser moved along the ghostly network of blue lines, obliterating sections of trees, rocks, and other material with surgical precision, following the marked areas on the placement grid that blanketed the ground with neon green circles and lines.  
  
As soon as the laser moved to a new section, the plascrete nozzles descended into the now empty area, moving back and forth, up and down as the jets laid down layer after layer of plascrete, creating coiled walls, skipping over door and window openings while another robotic arm created piping and wiring.  
  
The build was proceeding as it was supposed to, but Sanzo just couldn’t shake the buzzing in his ears, and he tightened his hold on the side grips, fighting to remain upright. From what seemed like afar he noted a rise in his body temperature, and felt drops of sweat beading on his brow while shivers racked his body. The Maten’s energy increased, splitting its focus to surge through Sanzo’s body while it continued running the terraform program. As the overload pushed Sanzo’s consciousness further to the back of his mind, he could hear the screams of the other three through his earpiece.  
  
Sanzo’s hands fell away from the grips, and he landed on the ground with a thud, his body convulsing while the terraform units continued creating the settlement.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Ah, you’re finally back with us.” Hakkai’s voice filtered through Sanzo’s gradual rise to consciousness.  
  
Sanzo opened his eyes, blinking at the harsh fluorescent light of the shuttle’s common room. He lay on his back, the chill from the riveted steel panels of the room’s floor seeping through his clothes and settling in his skin. He focused on Hakkai, and then he frowned and blinked some more. He decided he must be experiencing a hallucination triggered by the overload he’d had earlier, because in real life Hakkai did not have pointed ears, slitted eyes, and trails of tiny vines tattooed on his skin.  
  
Hakkai offered him a grim smile. “I can see you have questions. Can you sit up? I apologize for dumping you here on the floor, but we wanted to get you inside, and the bunks are too narrow to let me give you proper care. Gojyo, could you get Sanzo some water?”  
  
With Hakkai’s help Sanzo scooted himself up to lean against the room’s back wall, and once he had himself situated he accepted a cup of water from Gojyo, who also had the ear and eye thing going on. Instead of vines, however, Gojyo had an intricate pattern of tribal-looking tattoos that splayed across his upper chest, and ran down both arms.  
  
So, not a hallucination. Hallucinations also didn’t get him water or jab his bicep with a medi-pen.  
  
“What the fuck happened to you?” Sanzo asked in between sips of water. He checked his own arms, and besides some scrapes and scratches, they were design-free.  
  
Hakkai ran a small bio-scan unit over Sanzo’s body and checked the results. “The best explanation I can come up with it that we ingested, touched, or inhaled a native spore that triggered a mutagenic reaction.”  
  
“Speak Standard, Hakkai.”  
  
Hakkai sighed. “Gojyo and I have been… changed. As you can see. I think we came in contact with an organism that reacted with our Terran biology and created something new, similar to how your exposure to the Maten symbiont altered your physiology. I think it’s somewhat symbiotic in nature, as we are experiencing heightened senses and strength in addition to our altered appearance.”  
  
“I heard you all screaming, I think.” Sanzo’s memory was a little fuzzy regarding the moments before he’d blacked out.  
  
“Ah… yes. It was rather painful.”  
  
“’Rather painful,’ he says,” Gojyo said. “It was fucking horrible. I felt like I was being turned inside out, taken apart, and put back together again.” He elbowed Sanzo. “Seems like you missed all the fun, though. You look like normal—your version of normal, anyway.” He grinned, revealing lengthened canines that could probably be categorized as fangs.  
  
Sanzo resisted the urge to double-check his ears. “But I felt like shit, too,” he said. “I didn’t itch, but I think I had a fever. I couldn’t stop shivering.”  
  
“I think your symbiont fought off the spore,” Hakkai said. “All the scans I’ve done on you show no trace of it in your system.”  
  
Sanzo craned his neck to check out the rest of the crew quarters. “Where’s Goku?”  
  
Hakkai looked away. “We don’t know.”  
  
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Sanzo jerked himself upright.  
  
“He means we don’t know,” Gojyo said, as he slumped into a nearby chair. “I think we all got hit with this thing at the same time. For me, it started with feeling really itchy, and then the pain hit. I think we all passed out—I know I did. When I woke up I was on the ground, and the terraformer had retracted its tower and shut off.”  
  
Sanzo did some quick math. “The main materializer routine is six hours,” he said. “We’d barely gotten through two of that.”  
  
“Gojyo woke me,” Hakkai said. “and I checked my chronopiece—I had been unconscious for seven hours.”  
  
“And I went to check on Hakkai as soon as I woke up,” Gojyo said. “So I was out for about the same time.”  
  
“We stopped by Goku’s station,” Hakkai said, “but he wasn’t there. We thought that perhaps he’d gone to help you, so we went to your station, and we found you alone, and still unconscious.” He met Sanzo’s gaze. “We couldn’t wake you, and at that time I determined that it was more important to get you back to the shuttle while we still had enough daylight. You fell unconscious before you issued the deactivation command, didn’t you?”  
  
“Yeah, I think so,” Sanzo said. “I don’t remember telling the Maten to stop.” There were many benefits to hosting one of the Tenchi Kaigen symbionts—augmented senses, increased strength and stamina, and the ability to create and process program routines with the speed of a supercomputer—but there was an inherent danger in having an alien life form share your mind and body. The first thing a Host learned was control phrases; words that activated the symbiont’s power, and words that sent it back into dormancy. Without that control, a Host risked the danger of losing themselves in symbiotic trance.  
  
He’d been damn lucky; the Maten had finished the materializer program, and then had gone dormant by itself. Sanzo rubbed at his aching temple. “Back to Goku,” he said.  
  
“After we dragged your sorry ass here, I went back to look for him while Hakkai stayed here with you,” Gojyo said. “No luck. I gotta tell you, though, I think he went through some serious shit, maybe worse than us, because not only is his terraform unit all beat to hell, there were trees torn up and some that looked like they had gotten ripped apart.”  
  
Sanzo struggled to his feet. “We have to find Goku.”  
  
Hakkai stood as well. “We can’t until morning, Sanzo, the suns set an hour ago—Gojyo made it back here just before it got dark. We have no hope of finding Goku in the dark with just handlamps. And, there’s a chance he might be dangerous.”  
  
He’d been unconscious the better part of the day, Sanzo realized. He scowled at the empty sleeping quarters he normally shared with Goku, and then he walked over to the table and sat down heavily in one of the chairs.  
  
Hakkai set his bio-scanner on the table. “I’m afraid we have another problem,” he said, tapping his finger on the readout screen. “Remember how I said you had no trace of the spore in your system? Well, I’m afraid Gojyo and I have the opposite—the level of spore contamination is slowly building in our bodies. It’s like it’s trying to… take us over.”  
  
“Shit,” Sanzo said. He looked up at Hakkai’s troubled profile and was startled to realize that Hakkai’s vine tattoos were _moving_.  
  
“Indeed.” Hakkai powered off the scanner and headed over to the commissary unit. “I think we have at least a few days before we have to worry about loss of self,” he said, and then he took three bowls from a nearby cabinet and began punching buttons on the unit.  
  
_Loss of self?_  
  
Sanzo glanced at Gojyo. “You said you thought Goku was affected worse than you.”  
  
Gojyo nodded. “I think maybe because he’s smaller than us, body-wise, it’s getting to him quicker.”  
  
The thought made Sanzo want to flip the table. He settled for gripping its edge, and he watched his knuckles whiten.  
  
“While you were… sleeping,” Hakkai said, “I’ve been running some tests, as well as some research, on the spore. It seems to be associated with one of the flowering vines which has proliferated in the settlement area since the survey bots were here, and it acts like a prion, making DNA-level changes inside our bodies.”  
  
“DNA?” Sanzo frowned. “You mean the changes are permanent?”  
  
“Probably,” Hakkai replied. “However, I went over some of the bot scans that related to that vine, and I found an area not terribly far from here where the vine doesn’t grow at all—it surrounds the region completely, but does not penetrate the perimeter. Analysis of the bot scan reports suggest that the area was affected by a meteor strike.”  
  
“What does that have to do with any of this?”  
  
Hakkai’s gaze met his across the small room. “I don’t really hold out hope for a ‘cure,’ per se, but I think there might be something in that spot that could help reduce our levels of spore contamination. With your permission, I would like to go out there tomorrow with Gojyo and some equipment, and see what we can find.”  
  
Sanzo glanced at Gojyo, who was watching his flame-patterned tattoos flicker on his arms. “What do you think?” Sanzo asked him.  
  
Gojyo looked up and shrugged. “He’s your Medical and Science Officer, and he’s smarter than the rest of us put together. I say we go out there, because I don’t want to stay like this, and I’m afraid of it getting worse. We’ve got the two skimmers, so you can look for Goku while we look at this place. It’s probably better that you look for him, anyway, especially if he’s lost more of himself than we have. He likes you.” Gojyo waggled his eyebrows.  
  
Sanzo glowered at him while Hakkai sighed and said, “Gojyo, really?”  
  
Gojyo waved a hand. “Look, it’s just us here. The kid practically drools whenever our good Captain walks by. I told him one time that he should go for it, and he went all red and muttered some bullshit about commanding officers and subordinates, and I said that shit didn’t matter if your commanding officer _wants_ to be hit on.” The smile he gave Sanzo was shark-like, and knowing.  
  
Sanzo almost choked on his mouthful of water.  
  
“C’mon, Sanzo, don’t try to deny that you don’t check him out too. You can’t get much past a good communications guy, we know how to _infer,_ ” Gojyo said, accepting a steaming bowl from Hakkai. He gazed glumly at its contents. “Stew? You usually cook, Hakkai.”  
  
“Yes, stew.” Hakkai set the other two bowls and sat down. “It doesn’t seem right to cook, since Goku is not here to enjoy it with us.”  
  
They finished their spartan meals in silence, and then after Hakkai ran another bio-scan on Sanzo and pronounced him recovered from his symbiont’s possessiveness, he and Gojyo retired for the night.  
  
Sanzo dialed himself a beer and then went to the bridge and logged onto the comm unit. He crafted a carefully worded report to send off to Nataku—enough to put the revival sequence for the colonists on hold, but not so much that Nataku would feel compelled to go over Sanzo’s head and report their circumstances to Federated Worlds. That would need to happen later, but Sanzo wanted to keep things as quiet as possible for now. He hit ‘send’ and finished his beer while he waited for Nataku’s acknowledgment, and then once he received Nataku’s reply indicating that the android would await further orders, Sanzo put the empty glass into the recycling unit and headed off to bed.  
  
Several sleepless hours later, as Sanzo lay in his narrow, barely comfortable bunk, he stared at the riveted ceiling in the semi-dark and found the silence deafening. No snores from the empty bunk across from his, no metal groans and squeaks from its occupant constantly shifting in his sleep, no mumbled words from dreams, words that every now and then were his name.  
  
Only silence.  
  
He thought about Goku, out in the wild of a new world, possibly half-crazed from the organism that was trying to take over his body and mind. Hakkai thought the spore was acting like a symbiont… was it possible that Goku had experienced a full transition, like Sanzo had when the Maten had claimed him?  
  
Hakkai thought he and Gojyo had a few days before the spore levels would start to eat away at their sense of self, but if Gojyo’s theory about Goku was correct, Goku didn’t have that long.  
  
Sanzo cursed as he rolled to sit up in the bunk, and he called for just enough light to pull on some clothes and grab a day pack. He moved with considerable stealth into the common room and filled the pack with food packets and a good sized canteen of water, as well as a basic medi-kit and a few other supplies. Then he grabbed a decent sized handlamp from a rack near the cargo bay doors and headed to one of the service access hatches in the center of the empty cargo hold.  
  
Lowering the bay doors would make too much noise.  
  
Sanzo knelt by the hatch and flipped the manual override switch, and then he cranked the handwheel until the hatch door released and swung open. He dropped quietly to the ground, and then after he pushed the hatch up and cranked it shut, he crawled out from beneath the shuttle, tossed the pack and handlamp into the smaller of the two skimmers, and took off into night.  
  


* * *

  
  
Sanzo didn’t want to admit that Hakkai might have been right.  
  
He’d been out in the skimmer for five hours, following the lake’s meandering shoreline, and had found no sign of Goku, even using the skimmer’s bio-scanner. He’d hoped that Goku would stay near the lake, because it was not only the major source of drinkable water, it was full of edible marine life.  
  
The third of Shangri-la’s three suns finally peeked over the brightening horizon, and Sanzo checked his chronopiece. Hakkai and Gojyo would have left the shuttle by now, and were probably on their way to the mysterious crater.  
  
Where the hell had Goku gone?  
  
He decided to go to the spot where Goku had set up his terraform unit; there was enough light now to properly examine the area. Maybe he could find some clues about what happened to Goku and possibly suss out where he’d headed. He asked the Maten to feed the coordinates into the skimmer’s nav panel, and as soon as he engaged the auto-pilot the skimmer shot off over the water, heading for the half-built village.  
  
As he neared the complex Sanzo couldn’t help but cast a critical eye over the construction. Despite what had happened to the four of them, the units had completed their work and the buildings were ready for the second stage of the program, which would apply smooth, weather-proof coatings of plascrete over the coiled walls of the domes, insert plasglass to the window openings, and then create footpaths and cobbled walkways that would join all the structures together.  
  
Sanzo wondered if the second program would ever be run.  
  
He landed near the wreckage of Goku’s terraform unit, and vaulted off the skimmer. Gojyo’s description had been accurate—the terraform unit had been ripped almost in two. Sanzo remembered the way he had clung to the control unit when the Maten had reacted to the spore in his system, and he imagined that Goku had probably done something similar, only to end up tearing the unit apart in a surge of super-human strength. He looked around and saw the damage to the trees.  
  
No wonder Hakkai and Gojyo wanted to wait for daylight.  
  
After examining the area further, Sanzo noticed an erratic trail of boot tracks leading off toward the nearest dwelling, and figured he’d try there first. Just in case, he unsnapped the safety strap on his blaster holder before he stepped inside. Goku had definitely been here; his gloves and boots were on the plascrete floor, scattered as if Goku had flung them off. Recalling the claws that tipped Hakkai’s and Gojyo’s hands, Sanzo wondered if the gloves and boots had become unbearable to wear when Goku had transformed.  
  
Sanzo methodically checked the other rooms, holding the handlamp aloft to supplement the early morning sunlight. The eating area, first sleeproom, and toilet had no signs of disturbance, but when Sanzo entered the second sleeproom he saw Goku’s jacket and teeshirt lying in a heap in the middle of the floor. He frowned as he picked up the jacket; he could understand Goku shedding the gloves and boots—they were not designed for a wearer with claws. But the jacket and shirt? He remembered Goku talking about his stomach itching, and he realized that Goku must have pulled them off when the itching had worsened.  
  
A low growl behind him raised the fine hairs on the back of Sanzo’s neck, and he slowly turned around, letting his free hand hover over the blaster handle.  
  
Goku stood in the rounded arch of the doorway. The only clothing he had on was his pants, and the bottoms were ripped to shreds.  
  
Even after seeing Hakkai and Gojyo’s changed appearance, it was still a shock to see Goku’s transformation. Goku’s eyes and ears were similar to the other two, as were the claw-tipped fingers that were currently splayed out, ready to attack. He had a tattoo as well; a blood-red, four pointed sun whose rays slowly undulated across the taut planes of Goku’s abdomen, and it belatedly dawned on Sanzo that on all three men, their tattoos had appeared in the spots where they’d started itching. Goku’s hair had grown overnight, turning his usually spiky mop into an overgrown, wild mess, with sections reaching to the small of his back.  
  
The biggest difference was the wary, blank gaze that met his—there was no recognition at all in Goku’s golden, slitted eyes.  
  
Sanzo stood still, waiting to see what Goku would do next.  
  
Goku stared at him, head cocking to one side as he regarded Sanzo. His gaze flicked from Sanzo’s hair to the blaster at Sanzo’s hip, and after a moment he sniffed the air and focused on the daypack. A growl emanated from the vicinity of his tattooed stomach.  
  
Sanzo snorted. It figured that the idiot hadn’t found food.  
  
At the sound, Goku tensed and growled again, even as he kept his gaze on the pack.  
  
“Oh, stop it,” Sanzo said. “You want to eat? Back the fuck down.” He slowly raised his hand to ease off the daypack, carefully opened it, and pulled out a protein cake packet. Goku’s luminous gaze followed Sanzo’s hands as Sanzo opened the packet and tossed it over. Goku caught it and greedily stuffed it in his mouth.  
  
_Feeding time at the zoo,_ Sanzo thought as he opened another packet. Instead of tossing it, he held it out. “Goku,” he said, “you try and use those claws on me and I’ll kick your ass.”  
  
Goku’s head cocked again when Sanzo said his name, and it gave Sanzo some hope that Goku wasn’t entirely gone. A clawed hand took the packet from Sanzo’s hand, and then Goku ate the cake, this time a little slower.  
  
With careful movements Sanzo reached into the pack and pulled out the water flask, watching Goku’s reaction.  
  
Goku immediately took it, and after fumbling with the cap, he managed to get it open and drank almost half of it.  
  
Good, Sanzo thought, pleased that when he held out his hand for the flask, Goku returned it to him. He took a drink, aware of Goku watching his throat move as he swallowed the cold water.  
  
Goku stepped closer, and Sanzo stood his ground, feigning a casualness he didn’t feel as he returned the flask to the pack. He set the pack on the floor and when he straightened back up Goku was standing directly in front of him.  
  
_Shit, he moves fast._ Sanzo kept still, holding his breath as Goku touched his hair.  
  
“S-Sanzo,” Goku said, brushing his thumb over the soft, golden-blond strands. “Sanzo,” he repeated, this time with more certainty.  
  
“Took your time remembering me, moron,” Sanzo said softly. He took a chance and touched Goku’s cheek, tracing his fingers over a suddenly more prominent cheekbone, and then along the top of a pointed ear.  
  
Goku made a curious rumbling noise at the caress, and Sanzo watched slitted eyes dilate.  
  
Seconds later, Goku’s mouth was on his. The rational side of Sanzo’s brain tried to point out the stupidity in letting this go any further, but the irrational side—the side that was more than a little turned on by the way Goku’s fangs scraped along his lips—was too busy responding to the kiss to care. He opened his mouth to the insistent push of Goku’s tongue, and he slid his fingers into Goku’s silky, wild mane while Goku worked his hands under Sanzo’s shirt.  
  
It was amazing what turning into a demon-like creature could do to a person’s attitudes about fraternization, Sanzo thought. Right here, right now, all that Goku seemed to care about was getting his tongue halfway down Sanzo’s throat and his hands into Sanzo’s pants.  
  
“Easy with the claws,” Sanzo commanded in a harsh whisper against Goku’s mouth, gasping when he felt the sting of light scratches on the tender skin at the small of his back.  
  
“Sanzo,” Goku replied, and then he moved on to licking and nipping along Sanzo’s jaw and throat.  
  
It was as if Sanzo’s name—and physical presence—was a beacon that Goku steadfastly followed, keeping his focus on the two in order to keep his tenuous hold on himself.  
  
Sanzo let Goku to pull him down to the plascrete floor, and then Goku tugged off his shirt and murmured Sanzo’s name while pressing kisses against his skin. Sanzo had a moment’s panic when taloned fingers tugged at the fastenings of his pants, but the panic quickly dissolved when Goku’s mouth engulfed his aching erection.  
  
His world shrank down to that mouth, licking and sucking, and the pleasure-pain of a fang occasionally grazing sensitive flesh. He tangled his hands in Goku’s hair, rubbing his thumbs along the pointed tips of Goku’s ears, arching his back in pleasure when Goku hummed his approval of the caress.  
  
Sanzo hitched himself up on an elbow, brushing aside the wild mess of chestnut-brown hair away from Goku’s face so that he could get a better view, and he groaned when Goku fumbled at his own pants to free an impressive erection. As Goku stroked himself his grunts of pleasure reverberated along Sanzo’s length, bringing him closer and closer to climax. The heat of Goku’s mouth, the flick of his tongue, and the sight of Goku pleasuring himself sent Sanzo over the edge. He came hard into Goku’s mouth, bucking his hips and watching as Goku came soon after.  
  
He reached over and took Goku’s dripping hand, bringing it to his mouth, and Goku watched with dazed lust while Sanzo licked the come from Goku’s fingers. Goku then surged forward and took Sanzo’s mouth in a deep, rough kiss, before slumping next to him on the floor.  
  
Sanzo remained still and watched the sunlight move across the ceiling while he listened to Goku’s ragged breathing, and felt Goku’s still-sticky fingers tracing aimless patterns on his stomach. He turned his head and met Goku’s gaze, and while Goku wasn’t completely himself his golden eyes were clear, and sane. He touched his mouth to Goku’s, and Goku murmured Sanzo’s name against his lips.  
  
“Is that all you can say?” Sanzo asked, their lips barely touching.  
  
Goku frowned. “Words… hard,” he managed.  
  
Sanzo carded his fingers through Goku’s hair. “I need to get you back to the shuttle,” he said, and then he got up and refastened his pants. He retrieved his shirt and put it on, slung his pack on his shoulder and held out a hand to help Goku up. “But we need to clean you up first.”  
  
“M-messy,” Goku said, and then he grinned.  
  
“Yeah, you’re a mess,” Sanzo said. He picked up Goku’s shirt and jacket and shoved them into Goku’s hands, and as they left the building Sanzo got the rest of Goku’s gear and tossed it in the back of the skimmer. “Let’s go to the lake.”  
  
Getting Goku decent took longer than Sanzo expected, mostly because Goku stripped off to bathe in the lake, and when he stepped out of the water, gloriously naked and sporting an erection, Sanzo felt compelled to return the earlier favor, and Goku felt compelled to take him in hand while he did so.  
  
The suns were high in the sky when they finally made it back to the shuttle, both damp-haired from a second bath in the lake. Sanzo docked the skimmer, and then he guided Goku into the cargo bay, up the elevator to the crew deck, and into their cramped quarters. While Goku shimmied off everything except his boxers and teeshirt, Sanzo thumbprint-locked the door, not wanting to risk having Goku run loose while he slept. Sanzo kicked off his boots and socks, and let his pants fall to the floor, and then he gratefully sank onto the bunk as the fatigue of his sleepless night finally caught up with him.  
  
Sanzo told the room to switch to night mode, and in the near-dark he felt Goku settle in next to him on the narrow bunk. Goku’s body was warm against his back, and so was the possessive arm that slid across his waist. In the moments before sleep took him, Sanzo felt the warm press of Goku’s mouth against the nape of his neck, followed by the soft murmur of his name.  
  


* * *

  
  
Sanzo woke to two competing sounds—a persistent knocking on the door of his quarters and Goku’s low growling.  
  
“Sanzo! Are you all right? Is Goku with you?” Hakkai rapped at the door. “We’ve found something.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Sanzo replied, raising his voice enough to make the pounding stop. “We’ll be out in a second.” Goku crouched behind him, tense and ready to attack. “Take it easy, it’s just Hakkai and Gojyo,” Sanzo said, and in the seconds before the lights came up he had the irrational fear that Goku was lost to him, that they were too late.  
  
But Goku’s slitted eyes were still clear, even if he didn’t react to his crewmates’ names.  
  
Sanzo scooped their clothes off the floor and tossed Goku’s over to him. “Get dressed,” he said while he put on his pants. When Goku was clothed, Sanzo pressed his thumb against the lock, and before he opened the door he gripped Goku’s shoulder. “Behave yourself,” he said, his gaze meeting and holding Goku’s, “these are your friends.”  
  
He tugged the door open, and was pleasantly surprised to see Hakkai and Gojyo looking mostly normal, and Gojyo’s hands were full of dull, metallic rocks. Their eyes were still a little weird, and their ears weren’t quite human-shaped yet, but the moving tattoos were gone and for that Sanzo was profoundly grateful.  
  
“Goku! Thank goodness you’re back!” Hakkai exclaimed.  
  
“Careful, Hakkai,” Sanzo said, keeping his hand on Goku’s shoulder, “Goku’s not entirely himself.”  
  
“Damn, look at all that hair! Feed him, Hakkai,” Gojyo suggested, “that’ll make him remember real quick.”He watched Goku, who remained in a defensive semi-crouch. “Sometimes I don’t like being right.”  
  
“Good idea,” Hakkai said, and he made his way over to the commissary unit.  
  
Sanzo pushed Goku into one of the chairs, and sat down next to him. Gojyo set his pile of rocks on the table, and Sanzo reached over and took one. “Meteorite?” he asked, noticing the piece’s unusual weight and hatched, pock-marked patterning.  
  
“I’ve got one in the main scan unit just to confirm, but I’m pretty sure that’s what they are,” Hakkai said, and before he joined them at the table he set a large bowl of noodles in broth in front of Goku. “Here you go, Goku, your favorite, remember? Here’s a fork.”  
  
Goku blinked at Hakkai as he accepted the fork, his brows furrowing, and then he said Hakkai’s name.  
  
“Told you,” Gojyo said.  
  
Hakkai beamed. “Very good. Do you remember Gojyo?”  
  
Goku pointed at Gojyo with the fork, and then proceeded to eat.  
  
Hakkai sat and picked up one of the rocks. “We found this at the center of the crater. I keyed my scanner to it, and we did a pass of the crater; it seems like there are numerous chunks like these scattered all over the area, the meteorite must have broken apart on impact.”  
  
“We noticed things starting to change within an hour of being there,” Gojyo added, “and we tested Hakkai’s theory that it was the meteorite itself by leaving the crater, and taking some rocks with us.”  
  
“I ran scans on our spore levels while were were there, and when we were a good distance away. As long as we were in physical contact with the meteorite, our spore levels continued to drop.” Hakkai carefully ran a bio-scan on Goku, who was too busy shoving noodles in his face to care. “My goodness, his levels are frighteningly high.”  
  
“I think he had a complete symbiotic adjustment,” Sanzo said, and he told them about the benefits—and dangers—of a full adaptation with a Tenchi Kaigen symbiont.  
  
“I didn’t know that about the symbionts,” Hakkai said.  
  
“You wouldn’t,” Sanzo said, “it’s supposed to be classified. Candidates who go through Final Disclosure and opt out are mem-wiped of the later stages, and are just told that they failed a compatibility test.” He watched Goku drink the broth from his bowl. “Because of what I went through, I could recognize hallmarks of total adaptation in Goku. I don’t think it’s related to his size—it’s the full symbiosis that gave him his incredible strength and speed.” He glanced at Hakkai. “I figured it would be helpful for you to know some of this, since it looks like we’re dealing with a symbiont—but fortunately for us all, it doesn’t look to be sentient.”  
  
“I would agree with that,” Hakkai said. “It’s more like a mindless multiplication in a new host, like a virus, and the changes we experienced were side-effects.” He set his rock back on the table. “Thank goodness we have an antidote of sorts. I think we will have to keep some of this material on us, against our skin, for best results. Sanzo, do you think you could use the main materializer unit on _The Journey_ to make us something we could wear without too much discomfort? I assume we’re going back to the ship, at least for now.”  
  
Sanzo nodded. “Put all the information you have about the spore and the meteorite on a nanochip, and I’ll upload it and let the Maten process everything. Include your bio-scans, and Gojyo’s.” He nodded at Goku. “His, too.”  
  
Hakkai ran another scan on Goku. “Hmm, his spore level barely moved.”  
  
“He probably needs more ‘antidote’ than we do,” Gojyo said, and he rose and pushed a pile of the rocks in front of Goku. “Put these in your lap, kiddo, and hold on to them.” He turned to Sanzo. “I’ll go stow the skimmers, and get us prepped to head on back. I’ll meet you guys on the bridge in a few.”  
  
“I’ll let Nataku know we’re coming back to the ship,” Hakkai said, “and I’ll also take care of getting that information burned on a chip for you, Sanzo, so that you can get started as soon as we get back.” Hakkai rose from his chair. “Keep checking Goku’s levels, will you?”  
  
After they left Sanzo went to the commissary unit and dialed something to eat, and after he ate the sandwich that it produced he dialed two beers from the cold dispensary. He handed one of the glasses to Goku.  
  
“Thanks,” Goku said, shifting the rocks so that he could take a long draught from the glass.  
  
“About damn time,” Sanzo said, pleased to see the small improvement. It had taken a lapful of meteorite to bring Goku to lucidity, and Sanzo had a suspicion Goku was going to need to wear a lot of it to stay that way.  
  
Goku looked up at him, his eyes slowly returning to their normal honey-brown hue instead of the luminous yellow-gold they’d been for the better part of a day. “Sanzo? I feel… weird. It’s like everything’s been far away.”  
  
Hearing those short, yet complete, sentences sent a flood of relief through Sanzo. Goku was going to be okay.  
  
He picked up the bio-scanner and did a quick pass over Goku’s body, and when he looked at the history graph he saw that the spore levels had taken a significant drop.  
  
“I think I need a haircut,” Goku said, tugging on a waist-length lock of hair.  
  
Sanzo couldn’t help but laugh at the silly remark. He bent his head and brushed his mouth against Goku’s upturned lips. “Welcome back,” he said.  
  


* * *

  
  
If there was one thing Sanzo hated almost as much as cryosleep, it was paperwork. And now, thanks to their little adventure on Shangri-La, he had a metric crap-ton of it to deal with.  
  
The first thing he’d done when their shuttle docked with _The Journey_ was to plug into the ship’s main computer and initiate a program to orient enough subspace relays to allow him to have a real-time vidlink session with the director of the colony project, the head of Colony Administration, and the Chief of Science  & Exploration at Federated Worlds. He’d done up a quick foldspace memo to request the session, and the Class 4 flag he’d put on it ensured that it would process pretty quickly.  
  
After that, it took several hours for Sanzo to get his crew back to normal—or at least what they would now be calling normal. They would have the spore in their systems for the rest of their lives, that couldn’t be changed, but the meteorite pieces Sanzo had fashioned in the materializer would help limit the more unpleasant aspects of their symbiosis. Hakkai had specifically requested a set of three earcuffs, so that he could experiment with different levels of shielding. Sanzo had just rolled his eyes and gave Hakkai what he wanted, grumbling about science officers and their secret desires to experiment on themselves. Gojyo was the easy one; he was pleased enough with his thin wristplate, and he only needed a small amount of meteorite to remain stable.  
  
Unfortunately Goku required more than that, which Sanzo had mostly expected, but he had done his best to make them as comfortable and unobtrusive as possible. Goku had accepted it with his usual good grace.  
  
Sanzo spent another couple of hours preparing his report, culling pertinent facts from Hakkai’s analysis of the spore and its interaction with human DNA, in order to have everything ready to present to the Federated Worlds representatives. Sanzo wasn’t a planetary biologist, but he knew that it wasn’t a good thing when a planet’s plant life turned visitors into something more than human.  
  
The planet would have to be interdicted, there was no getting around that.  
  
The vidlink session in the office part of his stateroom lasted almost an hour, easily the longest real-time deep space conversation Sanzo’d ever had. There had been a lot of yelling after he’d read his report, and several other FedWorlds officials had been hastily brought in to ask way too many questions, but after he finished presenting Hakkai’s findings, everyone agreed that the planet would be placed under a Class 4 interdiction. The classification would not only prevent unauthorized landings, but would also indicate that the planet harbored a mutagenic reservoir of infection. The surprising outcome of the meeting was that the colony project’s director wanted the colonists revived, so they could vote on whether to continue on to their settlement, or return to their home planets. The director decided to take advantage of the relays and prepare a vid to be shown to the colonists.  
  
The officials were more than pleased with discovery of the meteorite, as well as Sanzo’s ability to craft the so-called ‘limiters’ from the rock. So of course he was tasked with making similar protections for any colonist who chose to make their home on Shangri-la. Everyone else would be put back into cryosleep and brought back to the colony project’s base of operations. Once the colonists had been returned, Captain Sanzo and his crew were to report to the Science & Exploration Division for debriefing and extensive physical examinations. Federated Worlds would send a jumpdrive-enabled supply ship to refuel and restock _The Journey_ for its return trip, and it was estimated that the ship would arrive in three months.  
  
By the time the session was over, Sanzo had a list a mile long of report requests, and a passcode for unlimited foldspace transmission to Federated Worlds’ headquarters. Much praise was heaped on the crew of _The Journey,_ as well as promises of commendations, bonuses, and hazard pay.  
  
Sanzo ended the vidlink, and then he flicked a few switches and called Nataku on the android’s internal channel. “Nataku.”  
  
“Yes, Captain?” Nataku’s voice crackled over the console’s speaker.  
  
“We’ve been told to wake up the colonists.”  
  
“Sir? All of them?”  
  
“Yeah.” Sanzo rubbed his forehead. “Tomorrow morning we’ll revive the leadership team first, and have them report to the passenger common area.” He told Nataku about the incoming vid the colonists would need to watch. “And we need to start thinking about where we’re going to put fifteen hundred people.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” Nataku said, and then he paused. “Captain, unless we were ordered to immediately revive the colonists, I strongly recommend that we prepare first. Not only will we have to access ship’s stores to feed everyone, but we will also have to allow extra water usage, and fully oxygenate the areas where we will have people gather. _The Journey_ was not designed to have everyone on board awake.”  
  
Sanzo pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re right,” he said. “We can wait until we’ve prepared the ship.” It would be more than stupid to wake up that many people and not be ready to feed them, as well as provide them with air, water, and standing room. “Make up a preliminary preparation list, and I’ll get Goku started on it in the morning.”  
  
“Calculating now, sir.”  
  
Sanzo keyed a memo requesting all personnel to report to the conference room after breakfast, and he pushed it out to everyone’s commlink with a high-priority alert.  
  
They were going to be stuck in orbit around Shangri-la for three months—four, really if you counted the time it was going to take to refuel and move the supplies once the ship arrived. Four months to finish a job that should have taken one.  
  
So much for the vacations they were going to take.  
  
Sanzo yawned and swiveled his chair around, casting a longing glance at his bed, which was half hidden by an openwork, geometric-patterned screen. Nataku’s suggestion would not only allow them to prepare for the onslaught of noisy colonists, but it would allow him and the crew to get some proper rest. He checked the chronopanel on his desk; when they had first entered orbit, Nataku had synchronized ship’s time with Shangri-la’s 30-hour days, and Sanzo was shocked to see that it was already mid-evening.  
  
Where the fuck had the day gone? Had everyone else already gone to bed? A quick tap on the locator panel showed him that Hakkai and Gojyo were in Hakkai’s quarters. He didn’t want to think about what they were doing. Probably _not_ sleeping.  
  
Sanzo wanted to sleep. In a proper bed. Preferably with his Chief Engineer. He wondered where Goku was.  
  
The door chirped at him, and the locator advised him that Lieutenant Son was standing outside his door.  
  
“Come in,” he said, and the door panels slid open to admit Goku into the room.  
  
Looking at Goku now, it was hard to believe that earlier in the day he had been a shaggy-haired, barely verbal creature that most people would have called a monster. Hakkai must have cut his hair, and now the only signs of Goku’s ordeal were the pair of meteorite cuffs on his wrists, and the thin band of meteorite that encircled his brow.  
  
“Hi Sanzo,” Goku said, plopping down in the sofa across from Sanzo’s desk. “I saw Nataku on my way here, he said we’re going to wake up all the colonists?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sanzo said. “Their director wants to allow them to choose whether they want to go down to the planet anyway. Nataku’s putting together a list of things you’ll need to do to get us ready for the crowd.”  
  
“Wow! They might want to still live there, even though the spore will get them?”  
  
Sanzo nodded. “The FedWorlds people want me to make more limiters. It’s possible that if people go down there wearing them, the spore will be repelled.”  
  
“Hopefully they won’t have to wear as much as I do,” Goku said, ruefully touching one of his cuffs.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Sanzo said. “The Maten chose the shape and quantity based on your bio-scans.”  
  
“Not your fault,” Goku replied. “I’m grateful that you made them. It was kind of scary when I was… that way.” He blushed and lowered his gaze. “I, uh, kind of attacked you, didn’t I? I actually came by to apologize about that.”  
  
“Apologize for what?” Sanzo leaned back in his chair. “It was about fucking time you made a move.”  
  
“I’m sor—what?”  
  
“You’ve had a real stick up your ass about rank,” Sanzo said.  
  
“But you’re the Captain, we’re not supposed to frata—freter—ugh, fool around!”  
  
Sanzo rolled his eyes. “Who the fuck cares? We’re not military, we’re part of Science  & Exploration. Our ranks mean jack shit outside of that division. That rule is in place to protect you in case I was an asshole and used my rank to try and coerce you into a relationship.”  
  
“But you didn’t!” Goku protested. “I was the one who—oh.”  
  
Sanzo waited.  
  
“Ohhh.”  
  
“Moron,” Sanzo said, and he walked over to where Goku stood and cupped the side of Goku’s jaw, brushing his thumb over Goku’s plump lower lip. He felt Goku shiver at the caress.  
  
“Y’know, Gojyo told me once that it was mostly okay as long I made the first move.” Goku ducked his head and pressed a kiss to the inside of Sanzo’s palm.  
  
The touch of Goku’s lips on his skin made heat pool in Sanzo’s groin. “On extremely rare occasions, Gojyo has been known to be correct,” he said.  
  
Goku glanced up at him with an impish grin. “Yeah? Gojyo also said you’ve been wanting me to hit on you for awhile.”  
  
“I think the fact that I sucked you off at the lake confirms that it was a mutually desired encounter.” Sanzo slid his fingers into Goku’s hair and gripped the newly-shorn strands, tugging hard enough that Goku yelped. “No more stupidity,” he said. “Do you want me or not?”  
  
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Goku said immediately.  
  
“Then strip off and get your ass in bed, Lieutenant.”  
  
“Sir, yes, sir!”  
  
Sanzo let Goku tug him toward his bedroom, and as they pulled at each other’s clothes and tumbled onto his bed, Sanzo reflected that there were worse ways to spend four months.  
  
Where was it he had said he wanted to go?  
  
_‘Someplace warm, where I can get a decent night’s sleep.’_  
  
Well, his bed was warm right now, with Goku in it. Goku’s naked body was warm, too, pressed against his, and so were the hands and mouth that moved over his skin, promising pleasure that would last well into the night.  
  
And sleep? Sleep was overrated.


End file.
